DARK ODYSSEY
Before the grave becomes her home,
My grandmother once told me that
Hope is the light that shines through our darkest moments.
I am a boy, a hollow vessel,
void Underneath, empty and dark.
In a world where emptiness reigns,
the shackles of failure burn through my skin
darkening my light, till the sun births the moon.
The light that once lit my soul
was first swallowed by the sea,
many years ago and now in my mouth
life tastes like the crisp bitterness of a widow’s tears.
BROKEN VESSELS.
(For my friends who became food for the sea.)
Every word from the mouth of a gun
spells a name known to all.
Yesterday, a bullet hugged my brother,
crushed his soul & I gathered every
pieces of his broken memory and
soaked them in my mouth.
Today, a shot embraced the city wall,
stealing ageless children away from their
parents and gifts then to the sky —
Their screams filling every void of pain in the pot of life.
SACRAMENT 35.
(After reading Adamu Yahuza)
In my home, every bit of broken bone is a masked
pancake dancing oily in the frying pan. In my
home, everyday, a hand misses a finger and a leg misses a toe.
When I was 18 and my mother took me to the bank
of the river Nile to wash away my eeriness,
I ran away with every pain of home.
I crushed every memory of home in my heart,
and hang the debris on a tree frowning at me
every beautiful morning outside my window pane.
Now, home is just a place where every meal is served with a bullet.
Feyijimi Fayowolé is a young self-taught emerging writer from Ondo state in Nigeria. He spends most of his leisure period swimming in the pool of refreshing poetry books and anthologies. He tweets @FeyiJamees001.
Cover photo credit: Los Muertos Crew